Although I was born in the
Okanogan, I have been living and recreating in and around Prince George
since 1979. After completing two years of study at the College of New
Caledonia, I spent several years travelling and working in Alberta, the
Yukon, and Europe. By 1999, I decided it was time to head back to school
- this time at UNBC - where I graduated with a B.A. in History in 2002.
The following year I began a Master of Arts degree focused on the historical
development of the native rights movement in the Russian Far North and
its connection to the intensive development of oil and gas resources beginning
in the 1960s. My thesis dealt specifically with the political mobilization
of the Khanty and Mansi people of northwest Siberia who, in the height
of Gorbachev's perestroika reforms of the late 1980s, established the
first native association in the Soviet Union called Spasenie Yugri or
the Salvation of Ugra.

Since joining the CURA Improved
Partnership Stream in November 2004, I have worked on analyzing local
perspectives on the process of effective forest co-management from interviews
conducted with 56 local experts from Tl'azt'en Nation, UNBC, Fort St.
James, and the Nak'azdli Nation. I am also involved in an IP project examining
the nature and distribution of co-management outcomes from local participants
by gender, affiliation, and ethnicity. In October, I will begin a research
project funded by the Real Estate Foundation of BC Partnering Fund that
will document the history of the John Prince Research Forest, a research
forest co-managed by UNBC and the Tl'azt'en Nation.